Student loans

Not long ago, a friend asked me to support a “movement” to forgive all outstanding student loans.

What, a bowel movement? My response to him was not just no, but Hell, No!

My parents paid off my student loans. I’m doing the same for my son. He’s currently saving money to go back to school.

Actions have consequences. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

These phrases became clichés precisely because they are true.

After she’s pregnant, it’s too late to say you don’t want to be a father. Nobody puts a gun to your head and forces you to attend Harvard.

Take what you want, but pay for it yourself.

Oh wait, sorry. My bad. I forgot about the “convenience” called abortion.

That subject was still taboo when I was single. In those days, women weren’t proud to have aborted a baby. Instead, they were ashamed they let themselves get impregnated by a jerk. It doesn’t seem to be a big deal these days.

Of course, “back in the day,” abortions were self funded and not covered by any medical plans.

Now, the self-proclaimed “have-nots” want the mysterious “haves” to give them anything they desire, and the soup du jour is a free college education.

Obama is playing to that class warfare crowd, moaning about the expense of higher education without examining the actual costs.

But has anyone asked the question, why? What makes college so expensive?

The liberal answer to the rising cost of education seems to be that it should be free, simply because it costs too much.

Really? What sort of logic is that?

I’m also a big believer in the axiom “you get what you pay for” and when it comes to college tuition, people are apparently paying way too much and getting way too little in return.

Well….what are we getting for the money?

I see where Harvard paid one professor $215,000 dollars per year AND gave her a zero interest loan of another $50,000.

Not exactly chump change.

College professors do not have forty hour work-weeks.

Plus, this particular professor has significant outside sources of income, which is not unusual. The people who don’t get paid extremely well teach for the love of teaching and work in community colleges and smaller schools.

For the record, I’ve read a couple of my son’s textbooks, and none of them were worth more than $20-$30 at the most.

Triple that, and that’s about what you actually pay for the crap from which they are taught.

Now as a capitalist, I’m a big believer in paying a person what he or she is worth.

That being said, given the current product of our educational systems, can anyone seriously argue we’ve gotten a reasonable return on our investment?

Our colleges are producing people who apparently cannot think for themselves. They are herded like sheep through high schools where the educators are more interested in satisfying quotas than actually transmitting worthwhile information from instructor to student.

They believe the solution to their problems is to act like a herd, and “occupy” public land until their grievances have all been addressed. The funny thing is, they don’t even know what they want, but these protestors are determined to occupy space until they get it.

My theory is, if you want something, get off your butt and work hard.

But the question remains: is education too expensive? Obviously, the answer is yes. If college cost less, then student loan balances wouldn’t be so high.

Oh, no, my liberal friends will lament. We can’t cut the price of tuition. We would lose our best educators to the public sector.

Well, in my opinion, it’s time to thin the herd of academic elitists hiding in ivory towers. However, if the example set by Elizabeth Warren was merely an aberration, this article would not have been written.

The “Occupy Movement” can’t have anything to do with their jobs – there’s nothing to be learned from the movement, a group of poorly organized malcontents who can’t conceive that somebody else has been Taxed Enough Already, precisely because they’ve never paid taxes.

If these professors did their job properly, and taught the Occupiers basic economics, accurate history, legitimate science, and real math, everyone would be a lot better off. The kids in college would have a meaningful education.

Obviously, the people at Occupy DC were clueless. Ironically, the woman speaking gibberish in the video linked above was wearing a Harvard sweatshirt.

And she claimed to be a junior. Scary, and depressing.

It has been my experience that whenever someone around me babbled that incoherently, I discovered that they were on drugs. The people in the video all appeared to be sober, unfortunately.

Some people have discovered the degree obtainable from an online university can get them a job just as fast as a degree from Duke or Harvard. The more “prestigious” the degree, the more likely the recipient will believe he or she knows everything.

The education you currently have is only as good as the effort you put into it.

As soon as you think you don’t need to learn anymore, you’ve begun the regression back to stupid.